The quality of the fresh fruit and vegetables in the Malawi markets was great, but the market is what I can only describe as an African scene. You could buy freshly cooked mielies, which had been “braaied” on the open coals (corn is the staple food of Malawi, you can see it growing everywhere).

Everybody wanted my business (especially since I was then only white person in the market), but they were friendly about it, which is more that I can say for Mauritius. Everybody in the market had something to do – there was a person there whose job was simply to shell the peas!

I have just finished learning a piece of music by one of my favourite composers, John Cage. The piece is called “4’33 silence”. I did find it a bit difficult to learn, so I have taken the liberty of editing it to just 33 seconds.

“a seductive twist on reality…leave all inhibitions at the door and let loose as this adult-themed production takes you on a sexy thrill ride…part burlesque and part cabaret”

Sound familiar?

It was on at the New York New York hotel. I never got to see it, but it looks really interesting!

So, do you live in Reality, or Zumanity?

Update: 3 Sep 2011

I have noticed this picture referenced on a “White News” website. I would like to make it very clear, that my post was not meant to be a reference to “racial submission of whites to non-whites”, or any such thing. I neither support nor endorse such websites. I find both pro-white and pro-black websites very disturbing.

I find it sad that for so many people race is still such a large factor in their thinking. I believe that people should

not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character – Martin Luther King

Currently, every 10 year old kid with a computer and iPod is downloading and sharing unlicensed (i.e., illegal) music.

Because it is so easy to download and share music, the music industry is understandably concerned about lost revenue, and everybody with a single illegally obtained MP3 (i.e.,: most of us) is technically a criminal. This is clearly a loose-loose situation.

So, how can we turn it into a win-win situation. The only way that I can see involves two key points:

the music industry make the revenue they require

people can download as much music as they want – at no (or very little) cost

Here are two suggestions.

Free Music How about getting the music industry to partner with some of the large social networking sites such as FaceBook or MySpace? Make the MP3’s available at no cost on these sites, but share the advertising revenue that is generated between the music and the websites.

The free MP3’s will drive huge traffic to the sites, and they will allow for highly-profiled advertising to be served to the users (aside from existing profile info they already have).

So, the users are happy- they are getting free music, the music industry is happy – they are getting (advertising) revenue due to the online music, and on top of it the websites are getting revenue due to the additional traffic.

Really Cheap MusicThe second suggestion is to pay a monthly subscription for your music. So for example, you pay $29.99 per month, which gives you access to whatever music you wish to listen to. So, you are not actually paying for the music, you are paying for the right to listen to it.

This is similar to a mobile phone contract, in which you are paying for the right to make a telephone call, regardless of if you make any calls or not. You could possibly extend this analogy and say that you pay 10c for each song you listen to – equivalent to paying for each phone call that you actually make.

Whatever option happens, I am convinced that the “goto a retail store and buy a CD” model is on the way out.